Wednesday, 8 July 2009

I was with one of my friends who is working in a big residential project.

It was a day where one of the units owner is coming to check his house for final touches before the handover.Neither I nor my friend have seen the owner. We just knew he is a wealthy businessman from Jordan. I expected to see a guy with an Armani suit, long hair styled with lots of gel.

When the guy came, we were all shocked. We saw a guy with a slightly-over-average beard wearing a normal short jalabiya (Arabic dress men wear in Jordan) and a simple red cap. We greeted each other and exchanged names. He was walking around the house and admiring the finishes, the material used and the design. All the workers there were appraised for their work. He was always smiling and had a simple, very polite way of talking to everyone. Even when there were some obvious flaws, he asked the supervisor to correct them without showing any sign of ingratitude or un-satisfaction.

Just when I thought I can’t admire him more, I was proven wrong. He was discussing the rental agreement (that his house will be rented by a hotel for 11 months, and he’ll be using it for 1 month). The agreement states that when the hotel rents the room for him, he gets 60% of the profit and the hotel gets 40%. He then asked an interesting question: “will these 60% applies only to the room charges? Or will I also get profit from the food and beverages (F&B) the guests order? “

Now I thought that he asked because if the profit includes the F&B, he’ll make more profit. It turns out; he doesn’t want to get profit from the F&B because he doesn’t want to make profit if the guests orders alcohol or pork. Then I admired him even more for having such way of thinking =)